Daily Mail

Ephraim Hardcastle

- Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk

BOrIS’S survival as PM, however precarious, has been greeted with a sigh of relief at Buckingham Palace. A resignatio­n and the election of a successor would have involved the Queen making herself available for audiences with the potentiall­y thorny issue of counsellor­s of state also looming. The death of Prince Philip and the US exile of Harry means only Charles, William and Andrew can do the job. And with Charles off to rwanda later this month and a new series of overseas trips for him and William due to be announced, disgraced Andrew would have to act if his mother was unwell. No one wants to grasp that nettle.

IS the Queen a fan of BBC sitcom Ghosts? It stars Simon Farnaby as the trouserles­s Tory MP Julian Fawcett who shuffled off this mortal coil during a sex scandal. At the weekend Farnaby played the eclairspla­ttered footman when Paddington met HM for tea. A source whispers that the Queen, spotting Simon on arriving for filming, quipped: ‘Ah, I see he’s wearing his trousers.’

HM, sharing marmalade sandwiches with Paddington, missed an opportunit­y to support Ukraine. She could have suggested that volodymyr Zelensky voice the bear from Peru. Before he was elected president, he did Paddington’s voice for the Ukrainian versions of the feature films.

THE steamy sex scenes between Daisy EdgarJones, pictured, and Paul Mescal in the BBC’s Normal People have been appearing on pornograph­ic websites. Director Lenny Abrahamson says that the isolated sex clips have been taken out of context. ‘We were straight on it with the broadcaste­rs and streamers, to constantly have anything taken down,’ he tells Radio Times. ‘I think that’s all you can do, otherwise you’re letting the worst people in society determine what you can do because of how they’ll construe it.’

LADy Glenconner discloses that she only wrote her memoir of her time as Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting after her shock at husband Colin Tennant leaving the family fortune to his former valet Kent Adonai. She tells BBC radio 3: ‘I went to Kent and said, “I do hope, Kent, you’ll [take care of the family].” I was very friendly with him – I’d held his hand during the funeral – and he just said, “I don’t know what you mean”.’ She adds: ‘I wouldn’t have written my book if it hadn’t been for that. I felt I must try and make a bit of money for the children.’ With sales exceeding 500,000, mission accomplish­ed!

THREE months after Emily Maitlis packed her BBC powder puff for LBC – apparently in quest of more money – she’s back with an eight-part Radio Four podcast investigat­ing the legacy of FBI boss J Edgar Hoover. The Beeb says: ‘She was commission­ed to do this before so carried on working on it after she resigned.’ Shades of the legendary country and western singer Hank Wangford’s song, Walk Out Backwards (And I’ll Think You’re Walking In)?

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